Cameras

This is my first 35mm camera - a Minolta Himatic-7 rangefinder camera that I bought in the autumn of 1966 while I was working at the Tipton Tribune.
I don't recall what I paid, but I bought it at the Ayr-Way store on the Kokomo bypass. Ayr-Way is gone and the bypass doesn't bypass anything.
It was a great learning tool and served me well for the next several months until I stepped up to a Honeywell Pentax SLR.
Over the years, I've owned three Pentaxes, a Nikon N90S, Nikon F, Nikon F5, and innumerable point-and-shoot 35mm cameras of various brands. My first digital was an Olympus point-and-shoot. Since then, I've owned a Nikon D100 and a Nikon D200. At present, the inventory includes the Nikon F (a sentimental relic), the F5 (just in case I ever need a serious film camera again), the D200 and an Olympus point-and-shoot film camera that refuses to quit and lives in the tankbag of my motorcycle.

G. Hamilton Rigg

This is G. Hamilton "Ham" Rigg, at work as news editor of the Tipton Tribune in November, 1966.
Ham was my editor at my first newspaper job. I worked at the Tribune from September 1, 1966 to Feb. 3, 1967 when I left to be a reporter at The Indianapolis News.
I learned a lot of stuff from Ham, who was a genuinely nice guy and also covered sports for the Tribune. I'm told he was instrumental in a lot of Tipton County kids getting athletic scholarships to colleges and universities.
Mostly, I remember Ham as a lonely little guy who drank every night and always smelled of booze. I heard he died of cancer a few years after I left Tipton, so I guess I caught him in the twilight of his newspaper career.
At some point in his career, Ham was a sportswriter for the Muncie Star. The Muncie Star Press memorialized him with the Ham Rigg Award, given to the most outstanding athlete at the Central Relays in Muncie. This year's winner was Eric Streit, a senior at Shenandoah High School.